Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
“Hush now, dinnae make a sound.” Keira said, holding Daisy’s hand as they tiptoed forward as a group.
After much discussion, they had decided to return to the village for the night and leave at dawn before anyone was awake. She knew it was a risk but they had no choice.
Keira had not seen a soul since they had come through the village boundary, and everything was quiet.
Daisy and Scott walked silently beside her, the quiet clopping of the donkey’s hooves the only sound.
When they reached the pathway to their house unmolested, Keira breathed a sigh of relief and continued to the door.
“Did ye hear that?” Daisy asked in a loud whisper.
Keira turned abruptly, straining her ears for any sound but there was nothing.
“Come on flower, we need to get inside.”
“But I thought I saw something move,” Daisy said.
A skitter of unease ran through Keira’s whole body and they stood frozen on the path for almost a full minute before she relaxed. Daisy’s tense posture calmed as well, and she scurried to Keira as she turned to open the front door.
But no sooner had she set foot inside than five or six villagers sprang from the shadows and took hold of her roughly.
Daisy screamed as Keira was dragged through her herb garden and out into the village square, kicking out at them for all she was worth.
She only saw a glimpse of her brother and sister. Scott was trying to fight them off and received a violent punch to the jaw for his troubles.
He fell to the ground, his head ricocheting against a stone, and all she heard as she was dragged away was her sister’s wail of anguish as she tried to rouse him.
Keira knew where they were taking her before she arrived, recognizing the shadow of the church in the distance, the ominous black windows waiting for her like two huge gaping mouths.
They opened the door to total darkness.
Lucas had been waiting inside for her without a single candle lit. Somehow, that knowledge was more frightening than everything else she knew of him.
She was thrown down, her knees jarring painfully against the cold slabs of the floor. She turned toward one of the villagers, lips parted to beg for him to set her free, but he turned away, his face set. Lucas had had ample time to turn every one of them against her.She froze as she heard echoing footsteps approaching, and she held her breath.
Dark boots appeared in her vision. She could well imagine the power Lucas felt, having her on her knees bent double before him like a subservient woman come to beg for her life.
In that instant, she made the choice that she would never beg this man. She would not give him any more of her dignity than he had already taken from her.
“It was foolish of ye to return here, child,” he said as she was pulled roughly backward by the men on either side of her as they bound her hands behind her back.
Lucas was almost entirely in shadow, his blue eyes looked black in the darkness.
“We only wish to help ye,” he said, his hand lowering to cup her chin, making nausea rise in her throat. “Renounce yer sins, and ye shall be free. Ye wouldnae wish for harm to come to yer family for their association with ye. God kens all. He will ken if ye have taught them any of yer magic.”
Keira struggled against her captors, keeping her mouth shut as he leaned down toward her, saliva pooling in the back of her throat.
Lucas was a handsome man, but just then he looked almost demonic with rage. As he glared at her, she gathered the saliva in her throat and launched it into his face, watching with satisfaction as it ran down his cheek.
“Leave us,” Lucas muttered.
To her horror, the men holding her released her and walked out of the church. She lost her balance and fell forward onto the floor. Without her hands to stop her, she landed face-first, feeling the cold slap her skin. She wondered if it would be one of the last sensations she ever felt.
“Ye ken what I want.” Lucas’s voice was low and intimate in the darkness. “Give me what I want, and all of this will be over.”
He crouched before her, taking her chin in his hand again and pulling her up to face him as he wiped the saliva from his face.
“Ye ken I wouldnae wish ye to go through this, Keira. Ye and I are a pair ye see, and it pains me to see ye suffer. Give me what I want.” He looked at her then with a smile as though he expected her to relent.
“Never.”
With a snarl of disgust, he dropped her head unceremoniously to the floor.
“Bring wood and oil,” he screamed, “we will build a pyre and burn this witch for her crimes.”
Keira listened to his boots march away.
So this is how it ends. I am to be burned at the stake for not wishing to marry a man I loathe. And there is no handsome laird to come to me rescue now.
Dawn was breaking over the far horizon as Keira stood on the pyre they had built, a plank at her back, her wrists tightly bound and immobile.
She looked around at the villagers, these people who she had once thought of as her friends, who now stood waiting for her to be burned alive.
The only sin she had ever committed was to care for the sick and the wounded.
She thought back to the forest and Laird MacAllen’s kind eyes as she had tended to him. If he were the last person she helped, she could live with that knowledge. She was glad that she had met him and grateful that he had tried to help her.
She cursed herself for not heeding her brother’s warnings about returning to the village. It had seemed essential to return to her cottage at the time. It contained everything she had ever done, every piece of her life she had built. She could not just abandon it.
She had believed they would have more time and could have fled at dawn. As she watched the sun rise slowly in the distance, she knew she had never made such a terrible misjudgment in her life.
She watched Lucas walk amongst the villagers, talking gently with each one and handing out the torches as though they were treats at a fayre.
“Lucas!” she shouted.
He turned to her, walking to the center of the clearing and holding his hands aloft for silence, clearly believing she had finally come to her senses.
Does he honestly believe, after all of this, that I would ever agree to be his wife?
“What sins do ye expect me to recant?” she demanded.
“Witchcraft!” he spat, “worshiping the devil, ungodly magic, and bringing a dead man back from the grave!”
“Do ye honestly believe him?” she shouted to the crowd. “I have only ever helped ye! He is mad.”
“Devil’s spawn, ye will be silent!” Lucas shouted. He moved to stand at the base of the pyre, dropping his voice enough that only she could hear it. “Are ye ready to accept me?”
She simply looked ahead of her, not dignifying him with an answer. She wondered where her brother was, whether he might be fighting to save her even now, she prayed that he was safe.
She could not believe this would be her fate at four and twenty, merely because she had refused to marry a madman.
“I am innocent,” she stated firmly, but there were no friendly eyes in the crowd as she looked around at them. He had poisoned everyone against her in a few short hours.
Lucas walked back into the center of the clearing, master of all he surveyed, drunk on power.
“The witch has been conquered!” he cried triumphantly. “No more shall our maladies be treated by her poisons, unholy tinctures, and earthly remedies! God alone can heal the sick, not this devil woman. We shall see her burned and her sins absolved so that she may be purged of the evil in her blood and find her deserving place in heaven where her soul belongs.”
He turned to Keira, an unholy light dancing in his eyes. He reached out an arm, and Gareth, one of the men most loyal to Lucas in the village, stepped forward and handed him a torch that had yet to be lit.
“Do ye confess?” Lucas cried, turning in a full circle as he addressed the crowd. “Even the laird who took her in has sent her back to us in revulsion at her unnatural magicks!”
“I wouldo say that’s quite correct,” came a deep voice from behind him.
There were shocked gasps all around as Laird MacAllen pushed aside the gathered crowd and made his way toward Lucas, his sword in his hands and murder in his eyes.
Lucas turned, and in an instant, all the power and confidence he had just wielded evaporated as though it had never been there.
Keira’s heart leaped in her chest at MacAllen’s fury as he sliced his sword through the air, cutting the torch that Lucas held in two.
“Ye are a man of God! How can ye treat a simple healer in this way?” MacAllen thundered, and Lucas, like the rat he had always been, dropped the remains of the torch and sprinted away, pushing through the crowds in terror.
“Burn her!” Lucas screeched. “This is the devil’s soldier; burn her!”
MacAllen moved to pursue Lucas but as he did so there were more angry cries from the villagers all around him.
Gareth ran forward, another torch held high. “Ye heard him! Do it now!”
Keira felt dread swamp her as MacAllen was almost pushed to the floor by a group of villagers who were hastily lighting their torches. He rallied quickly, but Keira could only focus on the flames leaping up on all sides.
As MacAllen pushed several of them aside, Gareth dropped his unlit torch with a snarl. His gaze was fixed on the laird and he launched himself at him, his hands grabbing for his neck.
Despite Gareth’s bulk, he barely wrong-footed MacAllen enough to make him step back a single pace. MacAllen pushed him aside as though he weighed nothing, as the other man fell heavily to the floor.
Gareth was not defeated, however, and sprang to his feet just as MacAllen turned to Keira to cut her down from the pyre.
“Behind ye!” she screamed as she watched Gareth pull a dirk from his belt and lunge at MacAllen.
The laird turned effortlessly, watching the man trying to fight him with almost brutal disinterest.
“I dinnae wish to hurt ye;” he said as their blades clashed in mid-air, “I have nay quarrel with ye if ye leave her alone.”
“She’s an evil witch,” Gareth bellowed before he lifted the knife above his head with two hands and brought it down hard toward MacAllen’s chest.
MacAllen’s face was impassive and still, but the arc of his sword did not waver. In an instant, there was a gurgling growl as MacAllen speared Gareth through the heart with his sword.
Keira closed her eyes, trying not to look at the gory spectacle. The crowd, all of whom had been paralyzed watching the two men fight, now began to disperse in a panic.
Keira tried to get a glimpse of where Lucas had gone. She scanned the crowd desperately, terrified he would go back to her cottage and hurt her brother and sister.
Then, a movement to her right caught her eye. As she looked, she felt a scream burst from her throat. MacAllen turned at the sound, his sword raised, but he was too far away to do any good.
A member of the crowd who had taken Lucas’s words to heart had approached the pyre with a burning torch.
He held it aloft, meeting Keira’s eyes with a sorrowful gaze.
“I hope this purges ye of yer sins, Keira,” he said gravely and dropped the burning torch onto the wood at her feet, as flames erupted all around her.